MIX NYC
Encyclopedia
MIX NYC is a not-for-profit organization based in New York City
and dedicated to queer
experimental film
. It is also known as the "MIX festival," for its most visible program, the annual New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival.
and Jim Hubbard. The festival was created because newly emerging Gay Film Festivals were not including formally inventive work, and the then vibrant experimental film venues marginalized gay and lesbian work. They were aided by curators Jack Waters and Peter Cramer from NAKED EYE CINEMA and Ela Troyano who programmed The New York Film Festival Downtown. The first festival featured the world premiere of Su Freidrich's DAMNED IF YOU DON'T, and from then on the festival became a showcase for new works by established makers, archival masters like Barbara Rubin's CHRISTMAS ON EARTH, and new emerging artists. Quickly, in concert with the emerging AIDS Activist and Queer Activist movement of the day- The NYLGEFF became a mass cultural event in the LGBT underground. Friday nights were guaranteed sold-out "Lesbian Date Nights" and a counter-culture of new interest in filmmaking
and video production
emerged around the festival community. MIX soon became very influential on other programming venues, often contributing significant work to The Whitney Biennial, The Berlin Film Festival and other important screens. MIX exhibited first films by major lesbian, gay and bisexual filmmakers including Todd Haynes
' college thesis film, ASSASSINS (which got him his first review, ever), Maria Maggenti
's NAME DAY, the first screening of Paris Is Burning
, when it was still on a dual system, Christine Vachon
's first film, and many others. Hubbard and Schulman prioritized artists' fees, paying all makers equally regardless of the length of their work, since in experimental film, labor intensivity was not determined by length. They included the first focus on films by and about black gay men in any film Festival. Schulman and Hubbard worked long and hard to get press review coverage for gay experimental work, often holding individual press screenings at the critic's convenience. They hand wheatpasted posters on buildings around the city, and leafleted areas where gay people hung out, like the piers and bars. Mix received no funding and managed to break even on enthusiastic box office support. They showed gay expermental film from other countries and brought films by hand to venues around the US, Europe and Japan. The festival has shown the work of filmmakers such as Barbara Hammer
, Nisha Ganatra
, Teri Rice, Jonathan Caouette
, and Isaac Julien
among hundreds more. As makers began to die of AIDS, Jim became active in film preservation, beginning with the film AVOCADA by the late Bill Vehr of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company. Eventually, he preserved over 2,000 hours of AIDS Film and Video, now available for free viewing at the New York Public Library
. During Sarah and Jim's tenure, no one was ever turned away from MIX due to inability to pay. The festival also included Transsexual work from the very first year, with Marguerite Paris's film ALL WOMEN ARE EQUAL. They found ways of getting works by makers like Chantal Ackerman who did not show in gay festivals. Among many fabulous moments in the festival's history was MIX's screening of Andy Warhol
's BLOW JOB which was attended by Kitty Carlisle Hart in a gown with a tuxedo'd escort.
Hubbard & Schulman ran the festival together as a community event from 1987-1991. After the 1991 festival, Schulman wanted to devote more time to her writing. The 1992 festival was organized by Hubbard and filmmakers Margueite Paris and Jerry Tartaglia. That year also introduced shows programmed by guest curators, who brought new perspectives to the line-up. Notable shows included Our Fanzine Friends, which drew upon the hot trend of queer zines, featuring work by Glenn Belverio
and Bruce LaBruce
; and FIRE, featuring work from the African diaspora. This last program featued work by Dawn Suggs, Shari Frilot, Thomas Allen Harris and others.
In 1993 Frilot and Karim Ainouz were the co-directors, and introduced many changes, including the name MIX, the production of a catalog (instead of handing our program notes), a new venue (The Kitchen
instead of Anthology Film Archives
) and a commitment to multicultural presentations and installation work. A stunning program that year was called The 1000 Dreams of Desire, curated by Jim Lyons. It was a special show featuring Teri Rice's "The Kindling Point" and "Les Affaire", at the Ann Street Bookstore in Lower Manhattan, where the peep booths were reprogrammed with experimental video, and 16mm film was projected in a separate room. MIX returned to Anthology in 1994, and combined with DCTV's Lookout Lesbian & Gay Video Festival because DCTV's building was under renovation. Ainouz scaled back his involvement, and Frilot became the definitive voice of MIX, making the organization a home for emerging filmmakers and makers of color. This was signalled by 1994's opening feature, Brincando El Charco, and even more powerfully when 1995's opening and closing events were films by makers of color These films, Vintage: Families of Value by Thomas Allen Harris, and Frilot's own documentary Black Nations/Queer Nations, brought new audiences to MIX. They started satellite festivals such as MIX Brasil and MIX Mexico.
1996 was the festival's 10th anniversary, and in honor of this milestone MIX presented queer work from the African diaspora at the Victoria Theater in Harlem, in addition to its downtown programs at NYU's Cantor Film Center and the Knitting Factory. The festival closed with the New York Premiere of Chocolate Babies, by Stephen Winter.
Frilot headed MIX through 1996. Her other legacy was a commitment to installation work and the nascent digital realm. Installations were on view in 1993, on the upper floor of the Kitchen. But in 1994, Shu Lea Cheang and Beth Stryker curated Cyberqueer, in the basement galleries of Anthology. Although installations were presented in subsequent years, they never matched these early efforts. Frilot went on to become a curator at he Sundance Film Festival.
Rajendra Roy was in charge in 1997, when the festival moved to Cinema Village, which was then a single-screen theater on E. 12th Street. In 1997 Ernesto Foronda and Maïa Cybelle Carpenter were programming coordinators for the festival. Carpenter stayed on until 1999, also curating additional programs in the years to follow. Roy brought on Anie Stanley as artistic director in 1998, and as a team they propelled MIX to greater visibility, with more corporate sponsorship, but with less emphasis on the identity politics of the early 1990s. 1998 also saw a sidebar of 8 mm films curated by Stephen Kent Jusick, featuring work by both contemporary makers and old masters, such as Jack Smith
, and Andy Warhol
's Polavision home movies. Roy is now the new film curator at The Museum of Modern Art.
Roy & Stanley stepped down after the 2000 festival, making way for Ioannis Mookas, who took the title of Executive Director. The organization, whose offices had been in the financial district, suffered after 9/11, and Mookas left after overseeing two festivals.
MIX as an organization took a new direction in 2003, when it initiated the ACT UP Oral History Project, run by Hubbard and Schulman (www.actuporalhistory.org), and funded by a grant from the Ford Foundation. This new effort gave the organization another aspect, different from being just a film festival.
Larry Shea and Stephen Winter took the helm of the festival in 2003. Jonathan Caouette
's Tarnation
was shepherded into being under Winter's supervision, and its premiere as the festival centerpiece was the beginning of its illustrious path to Cannes
, the New York Film Festival
and a distribution deal with Wellspring in 2004.
A large-scale installation called CAKE, about garment workers, by Mary Ellen Strom & Ann Carlson, debuted at South Street Seaport as the festival centerpiece. MIX expanded beyond the concept of the annual festival more in late 2004, with the introduction of MIXtv, which aired weekly on Manhattan Neighborhood Network
.
Yet MIX was unable to capitalize on the success of Tarnation
, and financial troubles led Shea to move the festival from November to April 2005, skipping 2004 entirely. MIX began a community screening program, which took work to various neighborhoods and communities, beginning with the Bronx in February 2005.
Larry Shea left MIX after the 2005 festival to devote more time to his video art, and a new team was appointed in the fall, including Andre Hereford, Szu Burgess, Kate Huh and Stephen Kent Jusick. Moving MIX back to its traditional November timeslot was the first decision of the new staff.
In May, 2006, MIX began the Naked Eye Celebrity Camera benefit, auctioning off disposable cameras exposed by artists and celebrities including Laurie Anderson
, Gus Van Sant
, B.D. Wong
, Alec Soth
and over 100 others.
The 2007 festival was held in an empty storefront in SoHo, and marked a shift away from traditional theater venues. Installations covered the space, and led back to the make0shift screening room. Additional installations were in the mezzanine, overlooking the whole space. Many shows were packed, including the Butt magazine show, and Homoccult and other Esoterotica, guest curated by Daniel McKernan and Richie Rennt. Another highlight was a screening of a rare 16mm print shot by Women's Liberation Cinema (Kate Millett
and Susan Kleckner, among others) of the 1971 gay pride march in New York. For this screening Sharon Hayes performed a live audio accompaniment.
In 2008 MIX took over a former Liz Claiborne department store in the South Street Seaport, filling every nook and cranny with installations, decorations and performances.
The 2009 festival took place in Chelsea for the first time since 1993, this time in an 7000 square feet (650.3 m²) empty storefront of a newly constructed condo building. Ceiling to floor glass windows gave MIX unprecedented street visibility, including projections by Lori Hiris and Kadet Kuhne. Installations were prominent again, most notably a large geodesic dome that was Wildflowers of Manitoba, by Luis Jacob and Noam Gonick. A live actor inhabited the dome, silently lying there, listening to records, lighting incense and ruminating, while 3 projections illuminated some of the panels with scenes of a same-sex love and commitment. The closing night feature Maggots & Men, by Carey Cronenwett, was sold out, as were several other shows. The festival suffered some noise complaints from condo residents above, who felt that festival-goers were too loud.
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and dedicated to queer
Queer
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...
experimental film
Experimental film
Experimental film or experimental cinema is a type of cinema. Experimental film is an artistic practice relieving both of visual arts and cinema. Its origins can be found in European avant-garde movements of the twenties. Experimental cinema has built its history through the texts of theoreticians...
. It is also known as the "MIX festival," for its most visible program, the annual New York Lesbian and Gay Experimental Film Festival.
History
MIX was founded in 1987 by Sarah SchulmanSarah Schulman
Sarah Miriam Schulman is an American novelist, historian and playwright. An early chronicler of the AIDS crisis, she wrote on AIDS and social issues, publishing in The Village Voice in the early 1980s, and writing the first piece on AIDS and the homeless, which appeared in The Nation...
and Jim Hubbard. The festival was created because newly emerging Gay Film Festivals were not including formally inventive work, and the then vibrant experimental film venues marginalized gay and lesbian work. They were aided by curators Jack Waters and Peter Cramer from NAKED EYE CINEMA and Ela Troyano who programmed The New York Film Festival Downtown. The first festival featured the world premiere of Su Freidrich's DAMNED IF YOU DON'T, and from then on the festival became a showcase for new works by established makers, archival masters like Barbara Rubin's CHRISTMAS ON EARTH, and new emerging artists. Quickly, in concert with the emerging AIDS Activist and Queer Activist movement of the day- The NYLGEFF became a mass cultural event in the LGBT underground. Friday nights were guaranteed sold-out "Lesbian Date Nights" and a counter-culture of new interest in filmmaking
Filmmaking
Filmmaking is the process of making a film, from an initial story, idea, or commission, through scriptwriting, casting, shooting, directing, editing, and screening the finished product before an audience that may result in a theatrical release or television program...
and video production
Video production
Video production is videography, the process of capturing moving images on electronic media even streaming media. The term includes methods of production and post-production...
emerged around the festival community. MIX soon became very influential on other programming venues, often contributing significant work to The Whitney Biennial, The Berlin Film Festival and other important screens. MIX exhibited first films by major lesbian, gay and bisexual filmmakers including Todd Haynes
Todd Haynes
Todd Haynes is an American independent film director and screenwriter. He is best known for his feature films Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, Poison, Velvet Goldmine, Safe, and the Academy Award-nominated Far from Heaven and I'm Not There.- Style and themes :The writes that "Haynes is...
' college thesis film, ASSASSINS (which got him his first review, ever), Maria Maggenti
Maria Maggenti
Maria Maggenti is a film director and screenwriter for film and television.She has been the script editor and has written many episodes of the American television series, Without a Trace , but is perhaps best known for her feature film, The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love...
's NAME DAY, the first screening of Paris Is Burning
Paris is Burning
Paris Is Burning may refer to:Film and television*Paris Is Burning , a 1990 documentary film*"Paris Is Burning" , the eleventh episode of Gilmore Girls first seasonMusic...
, when it was still on a dual system, Christine Vachon
Christine Vachon
Christine Vachon is an American film producer active in the American independent film sector and daughter of noted photographer John Vachon....
's first film, and many others. Hubbard and Schulman prioritized artists' fees, paying all makers equally regardless of the length of their work, since in experimental film, labor intensivity was not determined by length. They included the first focus on films by and about black gay men in any film Festival. Schulman and Hubbard worked long and hard to get press review coverage for gay experimental work, often holding individual press screenings at the critic's convenience. They hand wheatpasted posters on buildings around the city, and leafleted areas where gay people hung out, like the piers and bars. Mix received no funding and managed to break even on enthusiastic box office support. They showed gay expermental film from other countries and brought films by hand to venues around the US, Europe and Japan. The festival has shown the work of filmmakers such as Barbara Hammer
Barbara Hammer
Barbara Hammer is an American filmmaker in the genre of experimental films and a professor at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee.-Biography:...
, Nisha Ganatra
Nisha Ganatra
Nisha Ganatra is a Canadian film director, film producer, writer and actor of Indian ancestry. She is most well known for her acclaimed films Chutney Popcorn and Cosmopolitan.-Biography:...
, Teri Rice, Jonathan Caouette
Jonathan Caouette
Jonathan Caouette is an American film director, writer, editor and actor. Caouette is the director and editor of Tarnation , an autobiographical documentary, and director of All Tomorrow's Parties about a cult music festival.-Films:...
, and Isaac Julien
Isaac Julien
Isaac Julien is an installation artist and filmmaker.-Biography:Julien graduated from St Martin's School of Art in 1985, where he studied painting and fine art film...
among hundreds more. As makers began to die of AIDS, Jim became active in film preservation, beginning with the film AVOCADA by the late Bill Vehr of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company. Eventually, he preserved over 2,000 hours of AIDS Film and Video, now available for free viewing at the New York Public Library
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
. During Sarah and Jim's tenure, no one was ever turned away from MIX due to inability to pay. The festival also included Transsexual work from the very first year, with Marguerite Paris's film ALL WOMEN ARE EQUAL. They found ways of getting works by makers like Chantal Ackerman who did not show in gay festivals. Among many fabulous moments in the festival's history was MIX's screening of Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
's BLOW JOB which was attended by Kitty Carlisle Hart in a gown with a tuxedo'd escort.
Hubbard & Schulman ran the festival together as a community event from 1987-1991. After the 1991 festival, Schulman wanted to devote more time to her writing. The 1992 festival was organized by Hubbard and filmmakers Margueite Paris and Jerry Tartaglia. That year also introduced shows programmed by guest curators, who brought new perspectives to the line-up. Notable shows included Our Fanzine Friends, which drew upon the hot trend of queer zines, featuring work by Glenn Belverio
Glenn Belverio
Glenn Belverio, born 1975, is a journalist and editor based in New York, New York.In the 1990s, Belverio was a filmmaker and performance artist, whose 1993 collaboration with best-selling author Camille Paglia on the short film "Glennda and Camille Do Downtown," gained international attention...
and Bruce LaBruce
Bruce LaBruce
Bruce LaBruce is a Canadian writer, filmmaker, photographer and underground gay porn director based in Toronto, Ontario.-Biography:...
; and FIRE, featuring work from the African diaspora. This last program featued work by Dawn Suggs, Shari Frilot, Thomas Allen Harris and others.
In 1993 Frilot and Karim Ainouz were the co-directors, and introduced many changes, including the name MIX, the production of a catalog (instead of handing our program notes), a new venue (The Kitchen
The Kitchen
The Kitchen is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary art and performance space located at at 512 West 19th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City...
instead of Anthology Film Archives
Anthology Film Archives
__notoc__Anthology Film Archives is a film archive and theater located at 32 Second Avenue on the corner of East Second Street in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City devoted to the preservation and exhibition of experimental film. It is the only non-profit organization of its...
) and a commitment to multicultural presentations and installation work. A stunning program that year was called The 1000 Dreams of Desire, curated by Jim Lyons. It was a special show featuring Teri Rice's "The Kindling Point" and "Les Affaire", at the Ann Street Bookstore in Lower Manhattan, where the peep booths were reprogrammed with experimental video, and 16mm film was projected in a separate room. MIX returned to Anthology in 1994, and combined with DCTV's Lookout Lesbian & Gay Video Festival because DCTV's building was under renovation. Ainouz scaled back his involvement, and Frilot became the definitive voice of MIX, making the organization a home for emerging filmmakers and makers of color. This was signalled by 1994's opening feature, Brincando El Charco, and even more powerfully when 1995's opening and closing events were films by makers of color These films, Vintage: Families of Value by Thomas Allen Harris, and Frilot's own documentary Black Nations/Queer Nations, brought new audiences to MIX. They started satellite festivals such as MIX Brasil and MIX Mexico.
1996 was the festival's 10th anniversary, and in honor of this milestone MIX presented queer work from the African diaspora at the Victoria Theater in Harlem, in addition to its downtown programs at NYU's Cantor Film Center and the Knitting Factory. The festival closed with the New York Premiere of Chocolate Babies, by Stephen Winter.
Frilot headed MIX through 1996. Her other legacy was a commitment to installation work and the nascent digital realm. Installations were on view in 1993, on the upper floor of the Kitchen. But in 1994, Shu Lea Cheang and Beth Stryker curated Cyberqueer, in the basement galleries of Anthology. Although installations were presented in subsequent years, they never matched these early efforts. Frilot went on to become a curator at he Sundance Film Festival.
Rajendra Roy was in charge in 1997, when the festival moved to Cinema Village, which was then a single-screen theater on E. 12th Street. In 1997 Ernesto Foronda and Maïa Cybelle Carpenter were programming coordinators for the festival. Carpenter stayed on until 1999, also curating additional programs in the years to follow. Roy brought on Anie Stanley as artistic director in 1998, and as a team they propelled MIX to greater visibility, with more corporate sponsorship, but with less emphasis on the identity politics of the early 1990s. 1998 also saw a sidebar of 8 mm films curated by Stephen Kent Jusick, featuring work by both contemporary makers and old masters, such as Jack Smith
Jack Smith (film director)
Jack Smith was an American filmmaker, actor, and pioneer of underground cinema...
, and Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
's Polavision home movies. Roy is now the new film curator at The Museum of Modern Art.
Roy & Stanley stepped down after the 2000 festival, making way for Ioannis Mookas, who took the title of Executive Director. The organization, whose offices had been in the financial district, suffered after 9/11, and Mookas left after overseeing two festivals.
MIX as an organization took a new direction in 2003, when it initiated the ACT UP Oral History Project, run by Hubbard and Schulman (www.actuporalhistory.org), and funded by a grant from the Ford Foundation. This new effort gave the organization another aspect, different from being just a film festival.
Larry Shea and Stephen Winter took the helm of the festival in 2003. Jonathan Caouette
Jonathan Caouette
Jonathan Caouette is an American film director, writer, editor and actor. Caouette is the director and editor of Tarnation , an autobiographical documentary, and director of All Tomorrow's Parties about a cult music festival.-Films:...
's Tarnation
Tarnation
Tarnation is a 2003 documentary film by Jonathan Caouette.The film was created by Caouette from over 20 years of hundreds of hours of old Super 8 footage, VHS videotape, photographs, and answering machine messages to tell the story of his life and his relationship with his mentally ill mother Renee...
was shepherded into being under Winter's supervision, and its premiere as the festival centerpiece was the beginning of its illustrious path to Cannes
Cannes
Cannes is one of the best-known cities of the French Riviera, a busy tourist destination and host of the annual Cannes Film Festival. It is a Commune of France in the Alpes-Maritimes department....
, the New York Film Festival
New York Film Festival
The New York Film Festival has been a major film festival since it began in 1963 in New York. The films are selected by the Film Society of Lincoln Center...
and a distribution deal with Wellspring in 2004.
A large-scale installation called CAKE, about garment workers, by Mary Ellen Strom & Ann Carlson, debuted at South Street Seaport as the festival centerpiece. MIX expanded beyond the concept of the annual festival more in late 2004, with the introduction of MIXtv, which aired weekly on Manhattan Neighborhood Network
Manhattan Neighborhood Network
Manhattan Neighborhood Network is a non-profit organization that broadcasts programming on four public-access television cable TV stations in Manhattan, New York and provides a community media center that enables individuals and groups to produce shows for its network.-History:It has operated...
.
Yet MIX was unable to capitalize on the success of Tarnation
Tarnation
Tarnation is a 2003 documentary film by Jonathan Caouette.The film was created by Caouette from over 20 years of hundreds of hours of old Super 8 footage, VHS videotape, photographs, and answering machine messages to tell the story of his life and his relationship with his mentally ill mother Renee...
, and financial troubles led Shea to move the festival from November to April 2005, skipping 2004 entirely. MIX began a community screening program, which took work to various neighborhoods and communities, beginning with the Bronx in February 2005.
Larry Shea left MIX after the 2005 festival to devote more time to his video art, and a new team was appointed in the fall, including Andre Hereford, Szu Burgess, Kate Huh and Stephen Kent Jusick. Moving MIX back to its traditional November timeslot was the first decision of the new staff.
In May, 2006, MIX began the Naked Eye Celebrity Camera benefit, auctioning off disposable cameras exposed by artists and celebrities including Laurie Anderson
Laurie Anderson
Laura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson is an American experimental performance artist, composer and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings in a variety of experimental music and art rock styles. Initially trained as a sculptor, Anderson did her first performance-art piece in the late 1960s...
, Gus Van Sant
Gus Van Sant
Gus Green Van Sant, Jr. is an American director, screenwriter, painter, photographer, musician, and author. He is a two time nominee of the Academy Award for Best Director for his 1997 film Good Will Hunting and his 2008 film Milk, both of which were also nominated for Best Picture, and won the...
, B.D. Wong
B.D. Wong
Bradley Darryl "BD" Wong is an American actor, best-known for his roles as Dr. George Huang on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, as Father Ray Mukada on HBO's Oz, Henry Wu in the movie Jurassic Park, and for his starring role as Song Liling in the Broadway production of M...
, Alec Soth
Alec Soth
Alec Soth is an American photographer notable for "large-scale American projects" featuring the midwestern United States. His photography has a cinematic feel with elements of folklore that hint at a story behind the image. New York Times art critic Hilarie M...
and over 100 others.
The 2007 festival was held in an empty storefront in SoHo, and marked a shift away from traditional theater venues. Installations covered the space, and led back to the make0shift screening room. Additional installations were in the mezzanine, overlooking the whole space. Many shows were packed, including the Butt magazine show, and Homoccult and other Esoterotica, guest curated by Daniel McKernan and Richie Rennt. Another highlight was a screening of a rare 16mm print shot by Women's Liberation Cinema (Kate Millett
Kate Millett
Kate Millett is an American lesbian feminist writer and activist. A seminal influence on second-wave feminism, Millet is best known for her 1970 book Sexual Politics.-Career:...
and Susan Kleckner, among others) of the 1971 gay pride march in New York. For this screening Sharon Hayes performed a live audio accompaniment.
In 2008 MIX took over a former Liz Claiborne department store in the South Street Seaport, filling every nook and cranny with installations, decorations and performances.
The 2009 festival took place in Chelsea for the first time since 1993, this time in an 7000 square feet (650.3 m²) empty storefront of a newly constructed condo building. Ceiling to floor glass windows gave MIX unprecedented street visibility, including projections by Lori Hiris and Kadet Kuhne. Installations were prominent again, most notably a large geodesic dome that was Wildflowers of Manitoba, by Luis Jacob and Noam Gonick. A live actor inhabited the dome, silently lying there, listening to records, lighting incense and ruminating, while 3 projections illuminated some of the panels with scenes of a same-sex love and commitment. The closing night feature Maggots & Men, by Carey Cronenwett, was sold out, as were several other shows. The festival suffered some noise complaints from condo residents above, who felt that festival-goers were too loud.